


Beginning of a new chapter

by Vaeria



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gilnean, Gilneas, Nudity, OC, Original Character(s), Original work - Freeform, Other, Worgen, World of Warcraft setting, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 08:56:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13454823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaeria/pseuds/Vaeria
Summary: Rhodri Savage, the leader of a pack of Worgen stranded in the headlands of Gilneas, goes about his daily life until the discovery of a lone ship in a long-forgotten port town.





	Beginning of a new chapter

With a snuff and the gaping yawn of an old, sleepy wolf, Rhodri awakens. His blissful mid-afternoon nap had greeted him to the thousands of slapping splashes made by the rain in its tireless war on the Headland’s prisoning crevice walls rising from the land in violent defiance.   
Sleepy, Roman silver eyes, contrasting against his fur the same colour of the storm clouds outside, blink into focus, groggy and old.   
Scarred lips smacking obnoxiously as his monstrous head, along with the rest of his gargantuan body, stretches from the curled position on the dreary cavern floor. An eruption of tremendous applause from cracking, aged bones that notifies the others sharing the area with him of his arrival back in the world of the conscious.

An unfortunate wind sends a battalion of the cloud’s soldiers off course, likely costing them a concise victory, to instead disrupt the Worgen’s waking ritual by soaking his shifting back muscles in shivering water.   
Such is the price of guarding the entrance of their den. The leader has to make sacrifices, after all, even the smallest ones.   
His rusting, horrendously homemade armour wasn’t faring much better as it laid distraught beside him. The freezing downpour getting into the crevices of its weathered, painted copper pieces, all caught embracing scraps of steel in a scandalous display of inter-metal relations and quickening the mould that had engrossed the aged leather strips that bound it all together.   
Even worse still, the same fate occurred to the weapon that made everything happen, the decision to pick it up that changed their lives, his poorly smithed Claymore. A weapon that was only meant as a training exercise for Kelsie’s husband to attempt to smith his biggest blade yet, one that only the largest of soldiers would be able to wield. Or one oversized butcher, as Rhodri proved.

His memories of their change were disrupted by the reality of it. Vicious snarling and snapping coming from behind him, only moments before the whimpering of an injured, young male. A pathetic yelp that caused his wistful mind to react on instinct and set him up for his daily wrestle to keep his position of leadership.   
Even without any of his stolen or salvaged items, there were no Worgen, whether sane or feral, that could pose much threat to the beast that the Alpha had become, and that includes those that were meant to be part of his animalistic family.   
Irritated eyes swivel around to land solely on the cause of the ‘lovable’ bullying, and they unsurprisingly find the two brothers picking on Charlie as they always do. Eamon and Logan Hall, the pair always needing to fill their lives with hostilities and bitterness, and such emotions are always directed to the easiest target they can find, either prey or, as they were doing now. The ‘runt’ of the pack, Charlie Reynolds, laid cowering beneath the two, arm hugging close to his chest dripping with his crimson blood that started the beginning of an unwanted paint job in their cliffside home.

Now was not a time for thought, bargaining or begging, now was the time for punishment, which Rhodri meted out with swift justice towards the brothers. A mere cracking of old leg bones in action again was Logan’s only warning before the brunt, brutal impact of his leader’s uncovered shoulder against the brother’s sinewy side, sending the smaller male scraping his claws for anything to latch onto to halt his progress towards the cave’s jagged wall. Attempts that were evidently fruitless as the second collision was almost as pain-inducing as the first and left him joining Charlie in the whimpering choir as he collapses to the welcoming comfort of the stone floor.   
Eamon wasn’t as dim as his sibling and swiftly caught on that they were in serious trouble, but pride wouldn’t allow him to cower, only to turn on his brother’s assailant even if that meant sharing his fate. While the wrecking ball of an Alpha Worgen had his side towards him after his barreling maneuver, the junior took his defiance of being unable to attack who he wanted and poured it into his resolve to leap at the uncovered, naked leader and do as much damage as possible.   
The result, perhaps, wasn’t as significant as he had hoped. The older brother plummeted towards Rhodri, landing on a rugged back stretched tight like a canvas, smothered in multiple scarring from previous assaults. Like a proud artist, Eamon eagerly added another stroke to the masterpiece as chipped claw raked through toughened flesh and yellowed fangs found a weak grip near the nape of the trunk that supported the alpha’s head, but that’s where his success ended. 

Whilst the assailant merrily gnawed on Rhodri’s back, sounds of furious howling spelling vengeance bounce off the den’s compact, slick walls as the huge Worgen recovers for a counter-attack.   
Throwing his weight into his tirelessly worked arms, the seasoned fighter shoves his bulk backwards and launches Eamon off his vulnerable, weak stance. The pup swiftly finding himself scrambling under the sudden, bone-breaking pressure of a monster crushing his rib cage by sheer weight alone.   
After a sudden thwomp against Eamon’s snout with fisted claws as he clambers off the trapped brother, Rhodri helps the beaten challenger gather his bearings behind the bloodied nose whilst he’s dragged across the dirtied floor to be tossed into the shameful pile that Logan makes the foundations of. 

With brother’s whimpering mercy in unison, Rhodri rises over them on his back legs, dominantly displaying everything his nudity allows, before erupting the outcome with a victorious howling that rivals the storm raging outside.   
As this announcement draws on, three other, slender Worgen come scampering from crevices deeper in the den to add their unique, feminine voices into the fray of their Alpha’s. All of the females slimmer, smaller than the other males of the pack, yet none of them shares the lack of modesty that the others seem to insist on, draped in tattered clothing as they continue their sporadic outburst of wolven singing.   
As the song dies down, one of the latest arrivals pads her way to the side of the boisterous Alpha Worgen, her sleek, distinct steel fur glistening under the stormy-lit skies brightening the cave enough to reveal her strikingly similar set of silver eyes as she glares down to the defeated brothers.

“Dad, they’ve got the message. They start up again, I’ll ‘andle ‘em. Get yourself cleaned off at the shores.” comes a rough proposal in her canine dialect, Silvia always the one to make sure that her father didn’t neglect his own well-being.   
As the Worgen’s words catch Rhodri’s ears, there’s a grunt of agreement as he falls down to all fours, giving a final growl of a farewell before he skulks off to gather his armour whilst abandoning the absurd and clumsy weapon at the entrance. The pack left behind in the care of his daughter as he ventures into the wilderness of the headlands.

Roaming a short distance away to equip his rag-tag grouping of plating that makes his clothing of choice, Rhodri enjoys the pattering of rain against his skin as he observes the thunderous war above.   
His outer legs loosely draped by the unrespectable attire thanks to an overworked belt stretched across the waist and strained leather strips around the thighs. The choice intentionally failing to hide the proportionally sized testicles, acting as a clear display of his status as the dominant male in the area.   
His shoulders sharing a similar fashion of armouring using a harness around his upper torso, leaving him looking like an abandoned, old castle whose roofing is desperately hanging on for grim life, subjects to the will of the weather, or in this case, Rhodri’s movement. Begrudgingly dressed as an unemployed teenager asked to adventure outside by his parents after several days of lying about, Rhodri sets off in his skulking hike towards the shore after his less than graceful scramble down the dangerously soaked rocky outcroppings beneath the den’s only exit. 

The lupine man is soon meandering through the decaying ruins of the headlands, destroyed portions of ancient housing still standing despite the local downpour. Their existence almost reflecting the people that once inhabited the landscape of Gilneas, resolute in their purpose despite all the odds, with the relentless vines and moss smothering them that would eventually cause its downfall. Such as the Forsaken and the Horde would do with their own actions to the peninsula that jutted from the landscape in the southern end of Silverpine Forest.

Travelling without distraction, the Worgen was left to his thoughts. Distant whispers that fell back towards the drastic change in his entire world only a few short years ago.  
The assaults of the feral Worgen across their lands after the Court Archmage Arugal unleashed them to combat the mindless scourge, only to then have their ‘saviours’ turn on the population to add to their savage ranks by infecting them with the transformative curse.   
The Forsaken followed next under the leadership of Sylvanas Windrunner, a faction of supposedly willful living corpses that allied with the Orcs, both intent of breaking down the stalwart Greymane Wall.   
They were left broken as a nation whilst caught in the jaws of war and violence that enveloped the land, that was until the Kaldorei, the Night Elves, made their appearance known. With the help of their wizened druids who had knowledge of the curse that plagued them, they taught them how to control the form that Rhodri now wore like a second skin. Their ships came as well, allowing evacuation of the citizens to distant lands he never learned the name of. Lands that he and the rest of his kin were meant to escape to, but not before the Horde made their next push from the ocean. The would-be pack split off from the crowds and forcing them to flee into the wilderness to hide from the renewed assault against their capital.

Abandoned and cut off from the evacuation routes, Rhodri led the few trusted survivors to his butchery’s storage warehouse that an old friend owned and kept stocked for trading, supplying them with dried meat and locations across the headlands where the wildlife could be hunted. Luckily Rhodri remembered where he kept the maps hidden away in the hunter’s personal cabin nearby, no sign of the owner ever seen since.   
Such is that they embraced their change, some more than others, but they survived. Within a few months, the band of sane Worgen uncovered the destruction of war upon their homeland, a contamination of plague as a parting gift courtesy of the Forsaken. It’s revolting, stomach-churning gases and slime spreading through the heart and city of Gilneas, leading to Rhodri making the decision of scraping by on the outskirts as the beasts they had become.

Coming to the end of the ruins, Rhodri found his eyes drifting to the skyline of the withering city caught in the same rainstorm as he was. The odd, suffocating stench that his nostrils picked up from the billowing winds reminded him that it still reeked of death even as far out as he was.  
It wasn’t long until he saw something new on the horizon. A lone sail towering over the docking of Keel Harbour, the quaint harbour town once acting as the first stop for the fisherman to unload their catch.   
This ship wasn’t a forgotten remnant of those times, though. It was sitting there, proud, boastful, elegant in craftsmanship and ability to resist the abysmal weather, a behemoth of Human origin as far as Rhodri knew.   
In the distance amongst the collapsed houses, the vessel, as well as the oncoming shouts of crewmen floating towards his grey-tipped ears, were all unknowing of the effect they were having on the Worgen’s mind as it filled with hope. Perhaps, this time, they might make the evacuation, if only a lifetime too late.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the start of a small, personal backstory to one of my Roleplay characters, Rhodri Savage.


End file.
